Those Who Can, Teach. Those Who Can't, Do

Popular wisdom has it that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach,"
implying that people with real practical skills are out doing constructive
things, while those who can't cut it in the "real world" find a less demanding
refuge in teaching. Unfortunately, the record of "practical" people and
"applied" scientists in backing crank science has historically been so
outrageous and appalling that the truth is more nearly the exact opposite: Those
who can, teach. Those who can't, do.

This might be a good place to deal with a couple of misconceptions about
professors. To hear many people tell it, professors get a three month vacation, and are
insulated from the risks of the marketplace. A bit of vocabulary drill is in
order.

When you are out of work but
getting a paycheck, you're on vacation.

When you are out of work, not getting a
paycheck, but getting unemployment compensation, you're laid off.

But if you're
out of work, not getting a paycheck, and not getting unemployment
compensation,you're a professor.

So if you get by for three
months every year on your savings and alternative employment like most
professors, you can talk about dealing with "the risks of the marketplace."
Until then, stay out of subjects you know nothing about.

Eggheads and Practical People

Pseudoscientists have a strong belief that "practical" people
have greater ability to see the merits of new ideas better than the ''eggheads'',
who are only out to protect their pet beliefs. C. J. Ransom, a vociferous advocate
for the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky, wrote:

It has been my experience that the general public is quite
open to new ideas, especially if their results do not drastically degrade
their lives. Also industrial scientists, who are more closely related to
reality than theory, appear eager to encourage the discussion of new ideas. It
is the academic scientists, however, who historically have reacted to new
ideas less scientifically and more violently than other people.

There
are a lot of problems with these comments.

Openness to new ideas shouldn't depend on whether "their results do not
drastically degrade
their lives," but only on whether the ideas are true. The denial of the
dangers of smoking, of the energy crisis, and of environmental degradation are
driven largely by the feeling among the public that "their results will
degrade
their lives" (in other words, create inconvenience.) It's simply more convenient to deny the problem than to deal
with it.

Ransom simply has
to be kidding. It was not the ivory tower types who shouted "get a
horse" at early automobiles, who dismissed the Alaska Purchase as "Seward's
Folly," who smashed weaving machines at the start of
the Industrial Revolution (and resisted almost every industrial innovation
since, including all the folks who desperately hoped to reach retirement
before having to learn computers), or who have resisted evolution for well over a
century, but "practical" people. Nor is it the ivory tower
specialists who cling to astrology and paranormal beliefs and rationalize
away failure alter failure of these belief systems, but the general public - "practical"
- people.

When it comes to noting
that industrial scientists are more sympathetic to theories such as those of
Velikovsky than academic scientists, Ransom is absolutely correct, and
this point leads us to a fascinating but potentially explosive topic, an issue
that the engineering and applied science professions should be deeply
ashamed of.

Put Up Or Shut Up

So, before we go any further, engineers and applied scientists, tell me
what you personally are doing to debunk pseudoscience among your colleagues. Do
you speak out when a colleague espouses some moonbat theory about the moon
landings being a hoax, the World Trade Center being an inside job, or global
warming being a figment of the imagination? If
you're not doing anything about the situation I describe here, don't complain.

Practical People and Pseudoscience

Anyone who studies pseudoscience will soon be struck by how often engineers and
applied scientists turn up as supporters. Creationist authors Henry and John Morris of the Institute for Creation
Research were engineers. Duane Gish, author of a number of creationist books, is a pharmaceutical chemist. Harold Slusher,
another leading creationist, is a former petroleum geologist. A typical pattern
is the makeup of the members
of the ICR Technical advisory Board. In March, 2007, the board consisted of four
engineers, three medical professionals, one industrial scientist, one food
scientist, three science faculty from conservative religious schools and two
non-scientists. Not a single one was an an academic scientist at
a secular university. Harold Hill of the "missing day" fable
was an
electrical engineer. Much of the support for Velikovsky came from industrial
scientists. C. J. Ransom, quoted above, was a plasma physicist for General Dynamics Corporation.
Other scientific supporters included Robert C. Wright, Senior Development
Engineer for the Princeton Applied Research Corporation, and Raymond Vaughan, a
technician for the Carborundum Company. The infamous TV program Conspiracy Theory: Did
We Go to the Moon?featured Bill Kaysing,
described as an engineer and analyst for Rocketdyne, Brian O'Leary, a "NASA
astronaut in the 1960's", Paul Lazarus, a producer, Ralph Rene,
"Author/Scientist", Bart Sibrel, "Investigative Journalist",
Jan Lundberg, described as a technician for Hasselblad, Donald Percey of the
"Royal Photographic Society" and Howard McCurdy, "space historian
at American University." Not a single academic scientist in the bunch.

When we turn to the past, the same
pattern is evident. Hans Hoerbinger, originator of the popular "glacial
cosmogony" catastrophe cult of the 1930's, was a mining engineer. L. Ron
Hubbard, originator of Dianetics and founder of the Church of Scientology,
enrolled in but never completed engineering school. Perhaps the most interesting
was John C. Campbell, late editor of Analog science fiction magazine and for a
long time one of the most vigorous and eclectic champions of crank science in America. He was trained in nuclear physics at MIT and worked as an
industrial scientist. Campbell introduced America to Dianetics (and thereby
helped launch L. Ron Hubbard's career), championed
the Bridey Murphy reincarnation craze of the 1950's, and published the details of the fabulous Hieronymus Machine.
The Hieronymus Machine is a classic "threshold" device; the subject strokes a
plate which feels "sticky" when the subject is receiving the right psychic input.

To consider yet another example, much of the resistance to the theory of
continental drift came from geologists connected with the petroleum industry,
and the last-ditch opposition to the final acceptance of the theory came almost
entirely from that direction. Basically, one of the most prominent opponents was editor in chief of a major professional journal and he simply turned it into an outlet for anti-drift skeptics. Whenever a pseudoscientific theory claims
endorsement from someone with scientific or technical expertise, in the
overwhelming majority of cases the person is not an academic
researcher
but an engineer or industrial scientist. The only major exception that
comes to mind is the (small) group of physicists who have supported paranormal research.

Why do Practical People Fall for Pseudoscience?

What can we make of this pattern? To some extent, the pattern probably
just reflects sampling. If most people with scientific and technical training work in
applied rather than academic fields, when a few scientifically trained
people fall for pseudoscience, the odds are that most of them will be from
industry. The single most important moral to draw from this result is that no
credentials can serve to make a bad theory good, and that to claim that the word
of an engineer is especially significant because he is "closer to
reality" is simply ridiculous.

Why might somebody with a solid practical
background fall for pseudoscience? There are several possible reasons. Ransom
suggests one; the notion that "reality" is somehow opposed to "theory", and that somebody with a "realistic" world view is
entitled to disregard theory. Theories, however, are not like Greek myths,
picturesque fables made up to provide a satisfying picture of the world.
Theories are intended to work in the real world; celestial mechanics takes our
probes to the planets with mind-boggling precision, quantum theory allows us to
design solid-state electronic devices, and optical theory allows us to design
lenses capable of reducing a large drawing to pinhead size, while silver halide
chemistry gives us the ability to record the tiny image precisely. Put those three
branches of theory together, and we have the ability to produce a microcircuit
that is literally the equivalent of engraving a street map of Los Angeles on the
head of a pin, complete with three-dimensional freeway overpasses. None of this
would be possible unless theory matched reality to an astonishing level of
precision. If theory
and reality conflict, the theory is wrong or incomplete, or there are other
phenomena not described by the theory that are at work.

Poor Theoretical Understanding

When NASA convened a commission to analyze the 1986 Challenger
disaster, one of the panelists was physicist Richard Feynman, about as "ivory
tower" as they come (in terms of his academic degree. In his personal
style, Feynman was the antithesis of "ivory tower"). During a discussion of the hypothesis that launching under
cold conditions might have caused the seals in the solid fuel booster to become
stiff, many of the panelists agreed it might be a good idea, but it would be
hard to test. Feynman took a sample of the seal material, dunked it in a glass
of ice water, and showed that the seal became stiffer.

The most elementary kind of poor theoretical understanding is complete
failure to understand what a theory is in the first place. We see this in people
who dismiss whatever they don't want to believe in as "only a theory." A theory
is any organized body of ideas. Theories can be established beyond any
reasonable doubt (quantum mechanics), debatable (global warming) or false
(Ptolemy's theory, phlogiston, creationism). They can be based on mathematical
proof rather than observation (number theory). They don't even need to be
scientific (music theory). A hypothesis is an attempt to account for previously
unexplained facts; since a hypothesis is an organized collection of ideas, it's
a theory. All hypotheses are theories, but all theories are not
hypotheses, just like all residents of Montana are in the United States, but
everyone in the United States is not a resident of Montana.

The next level of poor theoretical understanding is failure to realize that
there are varying degrees of wrongness. Some theories are so precise that the
tiniest deviation is a puzzle. For example, the Voyager spacecraft are deviating
from their predicted courses and physicists are trying to determine whether the
difference is due to some tiny effect in the spacecraft themselves or due to
some new and unknown physical law. But the difference between the predicted and
actual positions is far too small to see with the unaided eye from earth. Other
phenomena are so complex that we cannot achieve high precision, either because
we still don't have good enough theories, or because it may never be
possible to get exact predictions. In those cases, having a prediction that is
even approximately correct may be a real triumph. Predicting the path of a hurricane
48 hours in advance would be a huge advance.

This fallacy is rife in the debate over global warming. If the data being
used to study climate change and the computer models being used to predict it
were really ambiguous, we'd expect as many negative results as positive. We'd
expect roughly as many studies to predict cooling as warming. But we don't. The
vast majority support warming. The fact that a model predicted a temperature
rise of one degree and we only observed 0.3 degrees doesn't change the fact that
warming was predicted and actually happened.

Finally, we have simple neglect of theory because the individual doesn't
see any reason for it, but prefers to focus on more immediate needs. People with poor theoretical understanding may be quite skilled at using a
practical application of a theory, while at the same time having no idea why the
theory really works. The
reason that some engineers championed Velikovsky while others have backed
creationism is that they do not know enough science to understand why
Velikovsky and creationism are wrong.

Narrow Training and Experience

Although an industrial
scientist may be intimately familiar with real-world phenomena that interfere
with
theories from being completely fulfilled
in reality, that person's perspective may also be limited to a very narrow range of
phenomena that bear on his or her work. It would be quite possible for such a
person to perform competently in a specific
field and still have very poor theoretical understanding,
or be quite unaware of the broader
theoretical implications of an idea. In his own work, Ransom may spend his
entire professional life without encountering a fact that refutes Velikovsky, but he may
be completely unaware that there are other fields where workers encounter such facts
every day.

This "tunnel vision" can lead some
applied scientists to overestimate their own competence and underestimate the
difficulties of other fields. The geologists who opposed continental drift in
the late 1960's and early 1970's were perfectly competent at finding oil; they
failed to recognize that much of their experience was simply irrelevant to the
evidence and techniques that were involved in the confirmation of continental
drift. Essentially, they drilled the same oil well for decades without
broadening their experience in the slightest. A good general rule here: if
you can't get a paper published in some field, you are not qualified to reject
the consensus of workers in that field. If you can get papers published in
astronomy, you can advocate for Velikovsky, but not until.

At the other extreme from arrogance is the possibility of inferiority complex. A joke
that has made the rounds of nearly every profession involves a scientist who
needs a brain transplant. The scientist is offered a brain from a graduate
student for $10,000, from a well-known professor for $25,000 and from an
industrial scientist (fill in the profession of your choice) for $100,000. When
the scientist asks why so much, the answer is that the industrial scientist's
brain has never been used. Unfair as it may be, there is
a certain disdain for applied research in some academic circles. An applied scientist might be impelled
to pursue some off-beat theory that offered the hope of making a great
theoretical advance because of a feeling that applied research is not as respected
as theoretical work, or at least not as appreciated, or the possibly out of resentment at the theoreticians.

When a "practical" person espouses pseudoscience, his "practical" knowledge
doesn't elevate the theory to respectable. Instead, it shows that his
understanding of science is so poor he may not be all that good at his
"practical" calling.

True Story

I have a friend who was the safety officer at a nuclear power plant. One
time he told me about an emergency response drill they once had. It involved
predicting the drift of a brief puff of radiation and deploying response teams.
The scenario had the wind blowing ten miles an hour. He pointed out to me that
the formulas used for predicting dispersal of radiation by the wind are good
only to order of magnitude, that is, the nearest power of ten.

I said: "If I were doing it, I'd put monitoring teams a few miles downwind
while I did the calculation, then direct them from there."

He said he would, too, but the engineer that was running the teams spent
forty-five minutes on his calculations before sending out a team.

I said: "By that time, the radiation is seven and a half miles
downwind!"

He said: "You know that, and I know that. Do you think I could make this
engineer see that?"

Irrelevant Credentials

Gavin Menzies, a former British Royal Navy officer, argued in
1421: The Year
China Discovered America, that the last great Ming Dynasty sea voyage was a
global exploration venture that took the Chinese to every continent except,
curiously, Europe. Menzies puts great store in his naval experience to give him
credibility as an authority on maps, ocean currents, and navigation.
Unfortunately, his book includes a host of really outrageous technical blunders
that no experienced navigator or sailor should make. He claims the Chinese could
not have determined latitude south of the equator until they discovered a star
to take the place of Polaris. There is no south pole star, and there are
simple ways to determine latitude using any known stars. He claims precession
changes the distance between Greenland and the North Pole and that charts of
circumpolar stars can only be drawn at high latitudes (they can be drawn at
any latitude once you understand why some stars are circumpolar. Give me a
star chart, put me in a windowless room, and I'll draw you an accurate map of
circumpolar stars for any latitude). He gives a completely wrong description of the ocean currents
off West Africa. For all his years in the Royal Navy (in submarines), Menzies does not know
celestial navigation, nor does he know the oceans, nor does he really know very
much about maps.

Then there's the essay by Jerome J. Schmitt, "Numerical Models, Integrated Circuits and Global
Warming Theory," on the Web site American Thinker, February 28, 2007.
Schmitt, who works in the semiconductor industry, draws an analogy between
models of vapor deposition on computer chips and climate modeling, because they
both involve gases, I guess. He argues that because it's difficult to predict
what happens during vacuum deposition on chips where conditions are precisely
controlled, therefore you can't put any credence in computer models of climate. You hardly
know where to begin with something like this. The process of depositing films on
chips is roughly equivalent to predicting how dew will condense on surfaces. Its
relevance to issues like infrared absorption by the atmosphere and global heat
transport? About the same as a climatologist's credentials to manufacture
computer chips. And although Schmitt claims to have "studied fluid mechanics and
gas dynamics and have a general understanding of computer models used in process
engineering," he doesn't have a clue that those skills have only marginal
relevance to climate.

Some of the sorriest pseudoscience comes from lawyers and judges who feel
that their experience in dealing with evidence qualifies them to dabble in
science. One of the more famous was Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael
A. Musmanno, a respected populist jurist and World War II naval officer, who
spent many of his final years debunking the Vinland Map and defending
Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of North America (the Vinland Map is
widely regarded as a forgery, though I am not terribly impressed by the
evidence, but the Viking presence at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland is
incontrovertible). You can respect Musmanno for his many accomplishments and being on the right side of a lot of
cases, but still note that he forgot that judges are supposed to recuse
themselves from cases where they have strong personal interests. Far less
honorable is the case of Philip E. Johnson, considered by many the father of the
intelligent design movement and author of Darwin on Trial. Johnson
considers himself qualified to write about evolution as "an academic lawyer with
a specialty in analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions
that lie behind those arguments."

The sad reality is that the legal conception of evidence is absolutely
worthless from an intellectual standpoint. The mere fact that it is possible
to exclude evidence from courtrooms, even though it is known by all parties to
be factually valid, demonstrates beyond doubt that a law degree is completely
without value in any field that deals with objective fact.

Practical People In Action

For the thirtieth anniversary of Pac-Man, Google designed a logo to look
like a Pac-Man game, complete with sound and interactivity. The Practical were
appalled:

Please be courteous to all of the PROFESSIONALS out there that use
google. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have any SOUND on it. PLEASE
PLEASE turn the SOUND OFF!!!

Hell I was running foxfire (sic) and was not even on google, but the sound
keeps playing no matter what page I am on. when it started I thought I
had a virus and ran a full virus scan. Thanks google now I lost like 1.5
hours with this issue.

WHAT IS WITH THE ANNOYING PACMAN AUDIO PLAYING ON YOUR SEARCH PAGE TODAY?
Some people WORK for a living and can't have that kind of bullshit NOISE
going off. TURN IT OFF ... and don't say MUTE my PC, I need the sound ON to
hear other PING type alerts. I will switch to BING if you don't fix this.
WTF ?!??!

Up on my ivory tower I spent the whole day unaware that Google even had this
logo, even though I used Google quite a few times. Unlike all the "professionals
out there that use Google," I am so lacking in practical experience that I use
the Google toolbar or Chrome. Only "practical" people know you have to go to the
Google home page to search with it.

Likewise, "practical" people wouldn't waste their time looking at the play
screen for the little speaker symbol at the lower left corner. Only ivory tower
types do that. And only ivory tower types who spent a lot of time playing video
games might suspect that, as a last resort, you could play the game and use up
all your lives quickly.

It
is only fair to close this discussion by stressing again as loudly as possible
(since many people can't disentangle their emotions from facts) that
few professionals in any field are vocal advocates of
pseudoscience, and that the level of acceptance of
pseudoscience in all probability is lower among professional workers than among the general public.
Still...

Engineers and applied scientists, tell me what you personally are doing
to debunk pseudoscience among your colleagues. If you're not doing anything
about the situation I describe here, don't complain.